About The Big Weave

About The Big Weave

The Red Balloon tapestry in progress at Mary Arden's Farm

The Big Weave is a socially engaged practice with a strong track record of successful collaborative projects making weaving accessible to all, enabling creativity, bringing people together and building communities around weaving. Weaving is about connecting, warp connecting with weft creates fabric, bringing threads and people together. While crossing threads, positive interactions happen, we can make connections with history, with ourselves, with each other, with other communities and across generations. Community weaving brings people together, conversations are had affording opportunities to understand different perspectives and hear personal stories. Sitting around a loom working together is a great leveller, social, economic and cultural boundaries all melt away, people relax, feel safe, reconnect with themselves and their own stories and connect with others through the telling of their stories. Young and old are able to sit down and share work together, different and diverse communities are brought together to share a common thread, to collaborate and build on the work of others. This project harnesses weaving to encourage connections between individuals and between communities, to transcend societal differences and to make connections with each other. The vibrant community tapestries created are a symbol of that connectivity.